The Other Woman (32 page)

Jane retied the black wool belt of her coat, girding for battle, and poked a finger against Jake’s chest. “Jacob Dellacort Brogan. Listen to me. You and I are going in.
Now.
We’re going to prove Kenna Wilkes is the victim, and, soon, we’re going to find out why she was killed. Big, big, big news. Whatever your guys found in that studio can just—”

She stopped, mouth open. Two people were walking around the corner, coming out of that little alley between the buildings. Even half a block away, she recognized one of them. That guy from the press conference. Matt. What was he doing here?

The other was a knockout blonde. She’d obviously spent a bundle on boots and hair-care products, but she clearly needed a coat.

Jake stepped aside to let them pass, turning away as his phone trilled. He raised a finger,
back in a second
.

The Matt person stopped in his tracks, staring at Jane. “Jane Ryland? From the newspaper?” he asked. He gave the woman beside him a look Jane couldn’t translate. The blonde took his arm, tucking herself behind him.

“Well, yes, we met this morning at the news conference, didn’t we?” This was all Jane needed. She cut to the chase,
let’s get this over with.
“You were going to call me, right? But you didn’t, right?”

“Is he with the newspaper, too?” Matt waved a hand toward Jake, who was leaning against the building, back to them, away from them, still focused on his phone call.

“No.” Jane stepped in front of him, blocking the view. End of chitchat. “He’s a friend.”

“Matt was just leaving.” The blonde smiled, waving Matt away. “Weren’t you?”

As Matt headed down the sidewalk, the woman took a step forward, holding out a hand to Jane. “I’ve heard so much about you,” she went on. “I’m such a big fan of yours. It’s lovely to finally meet you.”

Jake returned to Jane’s side, joining them.

Jane smiled, acknowledging the woman’s attention, shook her hand.
Always good to have a fan
. “Jane Ryland,” she said.

“Oh, of course I know that,” the blonde said. “And I’m Kenna Wilkes.”

54

Jane stared at the woman. She’d never seen this person in her life. Not at the Springfield rally. Not at the Esplanade event. Not in Archive Gus’s photos. How could she have gotten this wrong?

She put out a hand, touching the thick glass of the headquarters window, grounding herself.

“You’re—?” Jane’s voice was out of order. Not working.
There’s an explanation.

“Kenna Wilkes?” Jake finished her question.

“But I thought—” Jane’s brain struggled to remember. The hotel clerk had shown her the name on the computer screen, clearly, unmistakably. Kenna Wilkes. She was registered there. Jane had talked to her, taken her photo, for gosh sake, and the woman—
not Kenna?
—had answered to that name. Hadn’t she?

How could she have gotten this wrong?

Oh, god.
Alex
. Her story. The paper. Her job. Her career. She would forever be Wrong-Guy Ryland.

“Do we know each other?” the woman said. She looked at Jane, inquiring, then at Jake. She caressed her hair back from her forehead with one hand, let her curls fall into place again.

“Jane?” Jake said. His voice was wrong, too. Cold, cop-ish, and not-Jake. “Do we need to be somewhere else? To—talk?”

“No, no,” Jane said. Now she’d not only blown her own career, but Jake’s, too. “I mean, no, we don’t know each other. Sorry. I’m just—distracted.”

“Don’t give it another thought,” the woman said. She wrapped her arms across her chest, hugging herself. “But, brrrr. I need to go inside. Lovely to meet you.”

Jane watched the woman’s back revolve through the glass headquarters door, a burst of tinny march music spilling out.

She was determined not to burst into tears. “I don’t know, Jakey, I mean—there’s just no way that—she was absolutely—I mean, I saw, I talked to—”

Jake zipped his jacket up and down. “I guess it’s a good thing you didn’t do a front-page story about the beautiful and mysterious Lassiter campaign staffer who was done in by the elusive Bridge Killer.”

She was going to lose it. “But I
know
that she—”

He reached out a finger, lifted her chin. “Janey? You going to be okay? I really have to go. But no harm. I mean, we’re lucky. Right? No confrontations, no embarrassments, no headlines. You just—got it wrong. She’s the wrong woman. Everyone makes mistakes.”

Jane watched him click open the door of his unmarked cruiser. He gave her a final look—pity? disappointment?—before he got in and drove up Causeway Street, siren blaring. She stared after him, unseeing.

Her phone rang, its muffled trill struggling out from inside her tote bag.

“Shut up,” she told it. Then dug it out, clicked it on. “This is Jane,” she said.
Whatever
. At this point, how bad could it be?

“Is this Jane Ryland?”

A familiar voice. A man. But not—

“This is Samuel Shapiro.”

The lawyer for Channel 11. A flitter of hope struggled to emerge. Maybe this was some kind of good news. The million-dollar judgment was overturned, or Arthur Vick admitted he lied. Maybe she’d won the appeal? Could it be?

“Oh, hi, Sam.” Jane perched on a masonry ledge along the front of the building, feet braced on the sidewalk. Sam was a good guy, defended her every moment of that horrible trial, stood shoulder to shoulder with her on the courthouse steps on verdict day. “What’s up?”

“It’s about your appeal,” Sam said. “We’re pushing the deadline. It’s fish or cut bait time. If you can prove you weren’t wrong, let’s hear it. You got anything from your source? Any confirmation? Anything at all?”

Sellica was dead. And she couldn’t say a word about their relationship. Her ex-employers would have to fork over a million bucks. “No, Sam. Not any more evidence than I had at the beginning. I mean—you know this. My source is impeccable. Vick was lying.”

“Yeah, well, we told that to the jury. And look what happened. Now, frankly, we’re somewhat disturbed that at this juncture you’re having a difficult time proving what you told your employers is the truth.”

“But—”

“We need to have a brief meeting of the minds, Miss Ryland.”

Miss Ryland?
Sam never called her that.

“We’re, shall we say, of the opinion that we’re not actually the ones with the liability here. If you were—and I’m not saying you were, but merely
if
you were—not totally honest with Channel Eleven, then legally, it’s you who are liable for the judgment. I’ve been instructed to inform you, you might want to retain your own counsel.”

Jane felt the blood drain from her face. She took the phone away from her ear, briefly examining it as if it were an alien being. Taking a shuddering breath, she tried to answer.

“Retain my own—?”

“Exactly. Because if the judgment is primarily a result of your negligence, Miss Ryland, then Channel Eleven feels they should not have to pay it. Here’s the bottom line: You’re the one who’s answerable for the million-dollar damages. Not Channel Eleven. It’s not our responsibility to pay that judgment. It’s yours.”

55

“So who are these women, Mr. Vick?” Jake dealt a hand of five-by-seven photographs across the oil-paint-spattered table in Patti Vick’s studio. Ground level, triple-sized sliding windows showed off a panorama of the Fort Point Channel, with a perfect view of the post office parking lot where the supe held his press conference a few hours earlier. “Fort Point”—
the victim who isn’t Kenna Wilkes
—had been found in eyeshot of here. So had Sellica. That proximity, combined with Vick’s connection to three of the victims, was why the judge had quickly granted Jake’s request for a search warrant for the place.

Jake didn’t recognize any of the faces. The photos DeLuca’d just found in a desk drawer had no names on the backs, no photographer credits. Just twenty-something women, smiling and not-smiling, all in a row. No Roldan, no Howarth, no Sellica, no Fort Point. DeLuca had whispered that disappointing info to him. Jake’s own examination confirmed it.

“You’re asking me? About photos you found in my wife’s studio?” Arthur Vick barely turned his head, not moving from his post at the window, voice oozing boredom. “How would I—?”

“Detective Brogan?” Henry Rothmann, his gray pinstripes a counterpoint to Vick’s pressed jeans and monogrammed crew neck sweater, sidled up in front of his client, as if to prevent Vick from seeing the photographs. “I must interrupt here, because—”

“Well, your wife’s paintings, the ones in your living room, are somewhat, shall we say, nonrepresentational?” Jake ignored the lawyer’s attempts to derail his questioning. “Not portraits. So I’m wondering if you’d know why she’d be collecting photos of young women. Any thoughts? And, since she is your wife and all, I’m curious as to whether you know any of them. The girls in the photos.”

Two uniforms were posted outside. Two veteran detectives from Jake’s unit worked the back rooms, continuing the search. Stacks of canvases leaned against beige cement-block walls. Tubes of paint lined an industrial metal-and-bolt wall-unit of shelves. Bouquets of paintbrushes soaked in liquid-filled containers. The place reeked of turpentine and oil. So far, nothing unusual for an artist’s studio. Nothing incriminating.

Still, Jake was intrigued by the photos. Because they were in Patti Vick’s studio didn’t mean they were hers, obviously. But what had Sellica Darden’s mother told him?
All those other girls wanting to be in commercials.
Something like that.

“Detective Brogan.” Rothmann was moving closer to Jake and signaling Vick to stay back. “As a show of good faith, my client is willing to stipulate that some of those women may have auditioned for his television commercials. But he doesn’t know how the photos got here.”

Rothmann ran a hand across his forehead. “Now. Let me ask
you,
Detective. What if these
are
girls from the ads? Any of them reported missing?”

Which was, of course, the problem. If there had been a photo of the Fort Point victim—
who is not Kenna Wilkes,
Jake remembered with another pang of regret—or of Roldan, or Sellica, this would be the slam dunk, and Jake could pull out his handcuffs. But so far, so nothing.

“We done here?” Arthur Vick made a big show of pulling out a cell phone and thumbing some keys.

“We’re not, as a matter of fact,” Jake said. Pompous ass. “You ever have, say, ‘auditions’ here? Bring any of the commercial wannabes to this studio? Do you have keys to the place?”

“Detective Brogan?” Darrell James, a veteran homicide cop the squad called “Humpty,” appeared in the hallway. A black vest of body armor, emblazoned
POLICE
, covered his big-and-tall sports jacket. He’d ripped open the Velcro side-straps so the vest hung on him like a bulky bib.

Between two purple rubber-gloved fingers, Humpty dangled a clear plastic Baggie. “Jake? You might want to take a look at this.”

*   *   *

“Jane? You okay?”

How long have I been sitting like this?
Jane’s legs were almost numb from balancing against the building. She stood, smoothing her coat, every muscle complaining.

“Oh, hi, Trevor.” She was so bummed about the lawsuit, she’d let it distract her from the Kenna thing.
What am I missing?
“I’m fine, thanks. Just, ah, thinking.”

“Are you scheduled for a meeting?” Trevor said, arriving at the front door. His canvas briefcase slung crosswise over his navy pea jacket. “Something I can help you with?”

“Well, no, I … well, wait. Yes, actually. You can.”
Trevor. The campaign insider. Kenna. The campaign mystery woman
. “Do you know a Kenna Wilkes?”

“Kenna Wilkes?” Trevor gestured toward the lobby. “The woman who sometimes sits at the front desk? Receptionist? Sure. I know her. Kind of.”

He glanced at the lobby again, then back at Jane. “Why? Is there a problem?”

“Oh, no, of course not. I just met her, she’s very nice, and I was curious—” Jane had to untangle her thoughts. Every link in the chain so far reassured her this was, somehow, still a story. The name Kenna Wilkes was on the hotel register. Gina, the hotel clerk, had said Wilkes was with the campaign. But Jake’s research had proved there was no real person named Kenna Wilkes. Trevor might provide the next link. “—Do you know how she connected with the Lassiter campaign? And when?

“I’m researching,” she added, trying to come up with something Trevor might believe, “you know, a possible story on campaign volunteers. Who they are. Why they care. The new politics.”

Trevor’s face relaxed, as if this was something he could buy in to. “Oh, okay. Yeah. I was with the candidate when they met. Part of my neighborhood meet and greet project. She’s like a—war widow. Pretty sad.” Trevor aimed a forefinger at Jane, as if she’d had a brilliant idea. “You know, she’d be a great story. Has a little son, volunteered to help, very enthusiastic. Patriotic. And come to think of it, Jane, Channel Eleven was covering the campaign in Deverton that day, maybe you could— Oh, sorry.”

Trevor grimaced. Fumbled with his jacket buttons. “You don’t work there anymore. My bad.”

Perfect. Now I have the upper hand
.

“No, that’s okay,” Jane said. Kenna Wilkes didn’t exist on paper. But in real life, she did. So who was she? “You get her name from a list of registered voters?”

A trio of college kids wearing Boston University sweatshirts trooped up the sidewalk, each holding a grease-spotted fast-food bag. “Hey, Trev,” one said. “You coming to the get-out-the-vote thing?”

“Yup, be right there. Hold the fort.”

“She’s on the voter registration list?” Jane repeated as the kids went inside. “Or how’d you find her?”

“Well, that’s easy enough to check.” Trevor unzipped his briefcase, pulled out a clipboard. He flipped the creased pages of a yellow pad, muttering. “Here it is. Notes from that day. I have her at 463 Constitution Lane.”

Jane wrote the address in her notebook as Trevor continued.

“Let’s see. Nope, she wasn’t on my voter list. Turns out Kenna Wilkes was—Jane? You with me here?”